Screen Actors Guild Awards to offer window into Oscar race

Oscar tea-leaf reading doesn’t get any better than at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

When the 20th annual SAG Awards get underway Saturday night at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles (broadcast live on TNT and TBS beginning at 8 p.m.), the guild’s choices will be heavily scrutinized for their predictive powers about the Academy Awards.

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Actors make up the largest branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, so SAG members have perhaps more sway in determining Academy Awards winners than any other group.

This year, the five nominees for SAG’s top honor, outstanding performance by a movie cast, are: “12 Years a Slave,” “American Hustle,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “August: Osage County” and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.”

Obviously, SAG and the academy don’t always agree: Neither “August: Osage County” nor “The Butler” were nominated for best picture, and “The Butler” was snubbed entirely. The effects-heavy, sparsely peopled “Gravity” was predictably overlooked by SAG (except for a best actress nomination to Sandra Bullock), while it garnered 10 Oscar nods.

But the SAG Awards will give a window into support for Oscar favorites “12 Years a Slave” and “American Hustle.” In individual honors, SAG favored “12 Years,” nominating Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o. Jennifer Lawrence, for supporting actress, is the lone “American Hustle” nominee.

The SAG outstanding cast awards have lined up with Oscar best-picture winners, including “Argo,” “The King’s Speech,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “No Country for Old Men.” But SAG diverged in the past with picks like “The Help,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Little Miss Sunshine.” The actors did foretell one of the biggest Oscar upsets in 2005, choosing “Crash” over “Brokeback Mountain.”

But the SAG Awards also represent one of the more collegiate atmospheres of awards season, with winners almost uniformly expressing gratitude for an honor chosen by their peers. The speeches are often good, too, and can help stoke Oscar support.

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